J&K Politicians Fight Over Afzal Guru Mercy Resolution

A vote over whether to support a clemency plea made by Mohammad Afzal Guru – a Kashmiri man sentenced to death for his role in a terror attack on India’s Parliament in 2001 – was put off in the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly Wednesday amid a heated row between local political parties over the matter.

Rouf Bhat/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Congress and BJP politicians shouted at each other in the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly Wednesday.

Politicians have been divided over a resolution to support Mr. Guru’s efforts to seek a pardon from India’s president. Mr. Guru was convicted six years ago of plotting the raid on Parliament that left 14 people dead, including the five attackers, and brought nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

The clemency plea is Mr. Guru’s last chance to avoid death after a series of Indian courts rejected his appeals. Mr. Guru has maintained his innocence.

Professor Gul Mohammad Wani, who teaches political science at Jammu and Kashmir University, said many people in the Kashmir Valley believe Mr. Guru is a scape-goat and hanging him could “break the fragile peace in the region where people have held large protests against his sentence in the past.”

But the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s largest opposition party, which has only a small presence in the state assembly, has condemned the move and threatened to hold statewide protests against the resolution.

The state’s main opposition People’s Democratic Party, led by Mehbooba Mufti, has been the main backer of the motion, which was proposed this year by an independent member of the state legislature.

India’s ruling Congress party – which is a junior partner in the governing coalition of Jammu and Kashmir – has declined to state an official position, telling members to vote according to their consciences.

On Wednesday, politicians from Congress and BJP shouted at each other in the house during a debate over the motion which was supposed to end in a vote. At one point angry politicians overturned a table and the speaker was forced to adjourn proceedings.

The issue will now be taken up during the next session as the current assembly session ends on Oct. 4. Under the rules of the house, if a resolution is not discussed on the day it is listed, it automatically goes to the next session.

Mr. Guru was one of the four people arrested for their involvement in the terror attack on India’s Parliament.

Two persons were acquitted in court; the death sentence for another was later commuted to a 10-year prison sentence and only Mr. Guru was condemned to death.

Mr. Guru and his wife appealed for clemency in 2006 to India’s president. India’s Home Ministry, which was asked for its recommendation, last month advised the president against granting clemency. The president has not made a formal decision.

Abdul Rashid, an independent legislator from Jammu and Kashmir, earlier this month proposed a resolution to drum up support for Mr. Guru’s clemency plea.

Such appeals for clemency can take years to wind through India’s court system. Three men convicted for involvement in the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a former Indian prime minister, appealed for clemency to the president after losing court appeals.

After the president turned down their mercy pleas in August, the three men filed another petition, this time to the Madras High Court, seeking a stay on the execution of their death sentence. The court has yet to make a final verdict, and the men remain in jail.

Mr. Rashid said that although he condemned the attack on Parliament, any decision to hang Mr. Guru would have “serious repercussions on the situation in Kashmir.”

“I have full faith in the judicial system of the country. I have faith in our Constitution and the system, but we have to see consequences of such decisions. Please see other dimensions if Afzal is hanged,” he told local television.

Calling it a “sensitive issue,” Rashid Alvi, a Congress party spokesman, told India Real Time Wednesday, “It is for other political parties to decide themselves what stand should be taken on the issue.”

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